Turn A Nike+ Sensor Into A Keyless Car Entry System

Pressing the button on your key fob to unlock your car is so last millennium. This nifty modification will have your car unlocking itself as you walk up to it.

The modification is built by chaining together several components, all of them relatively inexpensive. The iPod dongle and Nike+ shoe sensor are the great communicators in the arrangement. The iPod dongle is attached to a special serial board that can translate the signal from the dongle. All of that in turn is hooked into an Arduino board, the tiny open-source hardware hub loved by electronics tinkerers.

Once tested and packaged up, the whole affair is hooked up to the wires controlling the locking and unlocking of your car doors. When you get close to the car with the Nike+ sensor in your pocket, your car door unlocks. Of course, you'll still need to have the actual key for the ignition, but you get a pile of geek street cred if you turn yours into a proximity-based ignition system.

For more information and photos, as well as a dose of caution about diving into the electronic innards of your car, check out the link below. No way you're playing a round of splice-o-matic with your electrical system? Fair enough—check out our top 10 car hacks, where the only razor you'll be using is for getting stubborn bugs off your wind shield.